


Sitting in a Tree

by fightingtherobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M, kid!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:36:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingtherobots/pseuds/fightingtherobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there’s a literal witch hunt, a spell gone horribly wrong (or horribly right, depending on how you look at it), your heart’s desire, and Superman ice cream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sitting in a Tree

**Author's Note:**

> A (really) belated birthday gift for my friend, Colleen, who wanted Destiel and something to do with a kid. It was supposed to be little and goofy, but then it developed a plot so now its long and goofy.

“Friggin’ hate witches,” Dean muttered. In the guise of an FBI agent, he was crouched in front of a body with its abdomen cut open. The cut was clean, obviously done with a knife, which ruled out creatures and most ghosts. Coupled with the hex bag Sam found shoved between the cushions of the couch, the body clearly said they had a witch on their hands.

“So let me guess, she’s missing her stomach,” Sam said from above him.

“Based on these cuts? Yeah, I’d say so,” Dean replied as he stood.

“So that’s one body sans stomach, another two days ago with its lungs removed, one about five days ago without its liver, and then that other victim a week ago without her intestines.”

“Ritual of some sort?”

“Sounds like it.”

Dean brushed his hands on his thighs. “Friggin’ witches,” he muttered again. “Do we know who we’re looking for? Any idea?”

“Not a clue,” Sam admitted. He started toward the door, nodding to the police officer standing there. “These kills weren’t for revenge or anything,” he continued once they were outside the little suburban house. “They were for the organs, so we can’t find anyone based off who the victims knew. So now-”

“Back to motel for hours of research,” Dean finished. He opened up the door to the Impala and climbed in. “Awesome.”

 

Three hours later, they still didn’t have a clue as to what ritual the witch was trying to perform, and they had even less of a clue as to who the witch was.

“I think it’s time to call Cas,” Sam said, sounding resigned.

“Yeah, probably.” Dean snapped the book in his hands shut. “Cas,” he said, raising his face toward the water stained ceiling of the motel, “We’ve got a witch and an obscure ritual on our hands here, and we could us a bit of help.”

There was an expectant pause until the sound of wings filled the air and Castiel appeared in the room.

“What do you need assistance with?” the angel asked, looking between the brothers.

They filled him in on the murders and the missing organs.

“Were all the victims about the same?” Cas asked.

“Same how?” Sam asked. “They were all female, mid thirties. Three of them were married, and one wasn’t, and all four had young kids.”

“And they sort of looked alike, too,” Dean added. “Dark hair, dark eyes. Pretty, generally.”

Castiel nodded as if this confirmed something. “That’s what the witch will look like. She’s performing an old ritual that’s designed to obtain one’s heart’s desire. It requires the specific organs of people who look like the one performing the ritual and have what the person desires.”

“So we’re looking for someone with dark hair and eyes that doesn’t have what those four women had?” Dean said.

“Precisely,” Cas agreed.

“And we would begin looking for her where…?” Sam prompted.

“I am unsure, but I could search the town briefly. I may be able to find her based on the negative energy that this type of ritual would put out,” Cas offered.

“Sounds good,” Dean encouraged with a vigorous nod. He didn’t particularly want to do anymore research.

 

Cas found her hideout in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. Cas also warned them that now she had the final organ she would be able to complete the ritual, and since none of them could determine what her heart’s desire was, it was best to make sure the ritual went uncompleted. So the three of them headed out to kill the witch. Dean was convinced it would be a simple thing to do, but Cas seemed quietly uneasy in the back seat.

He wouldn’t admit it, but he had a bad feeling about what they were about to do, though since he couldn’t exactly pin down what was unsettling him, he didn’t think it was necessary to ruin Dean’s optimism.

They drove slowly around the warehouse once before parking a block away. When they entered, the place seemed truly abandoned with no signs of life aside from the stray rat that skittered around their feet. In the back of the wide, open space there were a series of room, and Dean silently motioned for them to make their way back there.

The hallway was dark and littered with trash. Rats moved along the walls, hesitant of the newcomers. There were two doors, one across from the other. The two hunters and the angel stood between them. Sam nodded to the one on his right and waved Dean into the one on the left.

Dean nodded and turned to open the door as his brother did the same. Cas followed him into the room.

It smelled like cat piss. It was dark, and even the beam of the flashlight did little to illuminate the room completely. Dean swept the light over the room, but there wasn’t a witch in it, nor were there any organs. The room was empty, and they were about to exit the room when they heard a gunshot and a shout of, “Dean!”

Dean ran out the room, Castiel right behind him. The dashed across the hall to find a room identical to the one they were just in save for a heavy steel door that was spilling light into the room. Sam’s shout had come from there, and Dean didn’t hesitate before drawing his gun and running to it.

The door opened to a previously unused industrial refrigerator that had been refitted into a witch’s den. There was an altar covered in bloodied organs and just as Dean entered the witch, who had her back to Dean, threw something to the ground with a final Latin word. Dean fired at the witch, but the room was filled with smoke and with Dean’s shout.

“Sam!”

The smoke cleared and in Sam’s place stood a kid of about six. The witch was gone. He turned to Dean with wide eyes Dean immediately recognized.

“Dean?” Came a small, nervous voice. The smoke in the room wasn’t quite gone and the gunshot was still ringing in his ears.

“She replaced Sam with a child?” Castiel inquired from somewhere behind Dean.

“No, man. No. It’s… It’s Sam,” Dean muttered in response to the angel. He took a hesitant step toward the young boy, who was still frozen on the spot and looking at Dean with wide, fearful eyes. “Sammy?” Dean asked quietly.

His name startled him into motion and he ran toward Dean, wrapping his skinny arms around him. He only came up to Dean’s waist, and he smushed his face against Dean’s jacket. On instinct, Dean’s hand came down to rest on the back of Sam’s head and gently pet his hair to comfort him.

“It’s okay, Sammy, it’s okay,” Dean comforted him before turning to look at Cas. Castiel’s wide eyed look of surprise undoubtedly matched his own, and that made Dean nervous.

“We’ll go back to the motel,” Dean said. He wasn’t going to mention the obvious fact that his little brother was now extremely little so that he didn’t scare Sam, who was already slightly shaking as he clung to dean. The transformation coupled with the smoke and gunshot in a weird environment must have terrified him.

Cas nodded tersely and stepped away from the door so Dean could lead Sam out of the room and toward the Impala. With one final glance around the room, Cas followed.

 

Sam was eating cold pizza at the table of the motel room. Apparently, being scared had not affected his appetite, and now he was scarfing down pizza.

“Slow down or you’ll get sick,” Dean cautioned him, his tone making it apparent that the phrase was said out of habit. It wasn’t even clear if he knew he said it; Dean was absorbed in his father’s journal, looking for any information about what happened to Sam.

There wasn’t anything useful in it. Just as there hadn’t been anything useful he could find online. Cas was out looking for any information he could find, and the whoosh of air in the room alerted Dean that the angel was back.

He stood. “Did you find anything?”

Castiel shifted from foot to foot. “Do you think that, perhaps, we shouldn’t have this conversation in front of Sam? In this state, I mean.” He glanced at Sam, who was still seemingly oblivious as he ate his pizza, though his occasional glances at Cas said otherwise.

“Right. Yeah,” Dean agreed. “Hey Sam, we’re gonna be just outside the door, alright? Yell if you need us, ‘kay?”

Sam nodded with his mouth full of pizza. “Sure,” he said around the food.

Dean gave him a smile he hoped was comforting before quickly leaving the motel room. Cas followed, and he closed the door after him.

“Did you find anything?” Dean asked immediately.

“As to how she managed to reduce your brother’s age? No,” Cas said as he shook his head. “And I could not find anything concerning the spell she used either, and therefore I know nothing about how to reverse it. Did you have better luck?”

“Fantastic,” Dean muttered. “No, I didn’t. I can’t find anything. I have no freaking idea how she did it, but now Sammy’s six again. God damn witches.”

Castiel gave him a consoling look. “We’ll simply have to find the witch again. We can have her reverse it.”

Dean sighed. “She’ll have found a new place to hide out by now. And it’s not like we got a clear enough look at her that we could pick her out of a line up.”

“We’ll get Sam back to normal,” Cas said firmly. Dean had to wonder briefly if Cas was reading his mind; that worry was his real source of frustration when normally the (literal) witch hunt wouldn’t have bothered him as much.

Dean was about to respond when he heard a shout of his name from inside the motel room. It was Sam!

He drew his gun from his waistband and was in the room in a heartbeat to see a woman of about thirty attempting to climb in the window. An unsettlingly smile grew on her red lips as Cas and Dean burst through the door. Instead of being scared of being held at gunpoint, she laughed. She pointed at Sam and said through her cackling, “I’ll be back for you, don’t you worry, little boy.”

Dean fired on instinct, but the round kept going through thin air. The woman who had threatened Sam was gone.

“That was her,” Cas said after a moment. “That was most definitely the witch.”

“No, you don’t say,” Dean muttered sarcastically. Sam made a little noise, and Dean briefly put away his sarcastic tone and questions about the encounter to tend to his little brother. He crouched down in front of where Sam was still seated in the chair. “You okay, Sammy?”

Sam hesitated before nodding. “Who was that lady, Dean?”

“A witch,” Cas answered. Dean groaned as Sam’s eyes widened.

“A witch?!” Sam repeated. “What does she want with me? Is it that witch like Hansel and Gretel? Does she want to eat me? Or- or like that green witch? But I don’t have red shoes, Dean! Why does she want me?”

Sam was winding himself up to the point where he was about to cry. Dean turned to give the angel a dirty look before putting his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Hey, hey. It’s alright. That witch isn’t gonna get you, Sam. I’m not gonna let her, alright?”

Sam nodded. “‘Kay, Dean.”

Sam looked so small, sitting there in a chair that would usually look comically tiny compared to him. This was still his little brother he needed to protect, but now Sam needed that much more protection because he couldn’t do it for himself. He was still studying Dean tearfully, and Dean was filled with the same older brother urge he’d had since he was a kid: stop Sam from crying by any means possible.

When they were younger, that usually meant letting Sam get his way, but now Dean had money and the ability to leave the motel room (hell, it was probably safer to leave the motel room at this point). That meant he could get Sam his favorite treat from before he turned into a health food junkie.

“Want to go get some ice cream?”

 

Sam was all smiles on the way to the way to the small ice cream parlor Dean had noticed as they drove into town. He talked excitedly from the backseat about what flavor he was going to get. He couldn’t decide, and he must have changed his mind twenty times.

“Dean, I don’t understand why it’s necessary to get ice cream,” Cas said from the passenger seat. He sounded thoroughly confused.

“Dude, have you ever tasted ice cream? Of course it’s necessary.” Dean caught Castiel’s eye and he could tell that wasn’t the answer the angel was hoping for. Dean sighed. “It’ll make Sam happy.”

Cas nodded as if that confirmed a theory. They were both silent for a few more minutes as they listened to Sam decide between chocolate and strawberry ice cream. As they pulled into the parking lot of the ice cream shop, Cas said, “And to answer your question, Dean, I’ve never had ice cream.”

Dean laughed. “Then I am so getting you some!”

 

Dean left Cas and Sam in a booth while he went to order their ice cream, so the angel and the six year old were left staring at each other from across the table.

“Who are you?” Sam asked with a six year old’s bluntness. “Dean likes you but I’ve never met you before.”

“I’m Castiel, an angel of the lord,” he answered.

“If you’re an angel, then where are your wings?” Sam looked smug, like he caught Cas in a lie.

“They exist in a dimension not typically visible to mortal eyes.” Sam looked confused. “You can’t see them, but they’re there,” Cas clarified.

“Hmm,” Sam hummed. He seemed to ponder it over for a second. “What about a halo?”

“The halo is an entirely human interpretation of an angel’s grace.”

If Sam didn’t understand that, he didn’t let it show. “But why aren’t you up in heaven?”

“I’m helping you and your brother.” That was a simple answer, at least.

“Do you like Dean?” Sam asked. He kneeled on the booth seat and put his forearms on the table so he could lean forward seriously, like he’d seen Dean do.

“Of course I like your brother,” Cas answered. That was obvious, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t like Dean.

“No, no, no,” Sam said as he vigorously shook his head. “Do you like like Dean?”

“‘Like like?’”

Sam nodded. “You know, like Cas and Dean, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, first comes love, then comes-“

“I understand your meaning,” Cas said quickly. Sam’s song had been increasing in volume and he didn’t want to draw attention. “I don’t believe your brother wishes to kiss me in a tree.”

Sam rolled his eyes. It seemed to be the six year old way of calling “bullshit.”

“It’s okay to love my brother,” he said. His voice was completely serious. “Dean spends lots of time with me and does lots of nice stuff for me but no one does nice stuff for him. I think if someone got him ice cream or shared with him even when they didn’t want to, Dean’d be really, really happy.”

Castiel met Sam’s serious brown eyes. They looked wise beyond their years, and not just because they were supposed to be so much older. No, Sam was just a smart kid.

“Can you keep a secret?” Cas asked. He mimicked the tone he’d hear Dean use with his brother. Sam nodded eagerly. “Even though I don’t think I will be kissing him in any foliage any time soon, I do love Dean.”

“I knew it!” Sam shouted excitedly and it was at that moment Dean chose to return to the table.

Dean slid a bowl of strawberry ice cream and a spoon in front of Sam. “What’d you know?”

Sam met Castiel’s eyes. The angel’s heart beat rapidly in his chest, but Sam nodded at him. “I knew that you’d get Superman ice cream,” he said. The ease with which he lied would’ve made most mothers nervous, but Cas knew it would make Dean proud. “‘Cuz you’re a hero and all.”

It may have been a cover story for what he actually meant, but his comment about Dean being a hero was sincere.

“Thanks, Sammy. Now eat up.” Dean ducked his head, trying to his how much it touched him as he passed Cas his chocolate ice cream and the took a seat beside him.

Cas poked his ice cream with his spoon.

“Dude, you eat it,” Dean said with a smirk as he ate a spoonful of his own ice cream.

“Obviously,” Cas responded with his own touch of sarcasm. He spooned some ice cream into his mouth and it only took a second before he smiled. “Dean, this is delicious.”

“Yes it is,” Dean laughed. A thought struck him, and he laughed even harder. “Oh God, I’m going to a have a hyper angel and six year old on my hands.”

Neither Cas nor Sam took much note of Dean’s remark, however. They were too busy enjoying their ice cream.

 

All sugar highs must end with a crash. The laws of gravity dictated it. Sam had crashed on one of the motel beds, but thankfully Castiel’s angel mojo prevented him from the harmful effects of the sugar.

With Sam asleep, the two of them could talk about the situation without worrying about scaring Sam.

“So she killed all those people because she wanted to do some weird ritual that would get her ‘her heart’s desire’ or some shit,” Dean reiterated. Sometimes it was best to go back to what you knew and work from there. “But did she get it? How exactly are we going to know what her hearts desire is? It could be a puppy for all I know.”

“I highly doubt her hearts desire was for a canine,” Cas commented mildly. He was working the problem out too, he just didn’t feel the same need to do it aloud as Dean did.

“And then what’s up with her turning Sam into a kid? Obviously she could’ve killed him if she wanted to get him out of the way, but instead she de-age-ified him. And then comes back for him.” Dean sighed in frustration.

“Her hearts desire,” Cas muttered. He knew what his was, but he was trying to contemplate what the witch’s might have been. “Is there any way we could find the woman on the Internet based on her looks?” he asked Dean.

Dean shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

An hour later, Dean waved Cas over to the computer, where he was looking at an article featuring a picture of a woman. The witch.

“That’s her,” Cas said.

“Yep. And it says here that she was the guinea pig for some medication and it left her unable to have kids. She sued and everything, but apparently it couldn’t be fixed.” Dean opened a new tab. “She lost the case and it left her broke, and a few months later her husband leaves her.”

“Her loss drove her mad,” Cas summarized.

“Basically.”

“So her heart’s desire was for a child. She completed the ritual with Sam and then came back to collect him.”

“That’s about it, dude.” Dean quietly closed the laptop lid, trying to avoid waking Sam. “So now we just got to figure how to lift the spell.”

“It should be removed when she dies,” Cas said. “When her heart is no longer beating, there’s nothing to maintain the spell that has to do with one’s heart’s desire.”

Dean nodded. It made sense. “So now we just gotta find and gank the bitch.”

“Which should not be too difficult to do, considering we know now what she looks like.”

Dean was about to agree when a noise from the bed distracted him. Sam whimpered again, and Dean was brought to his feet on instinct.

“It’s a nightmare,” Cas said softly.

“I know. I’m not surprised, honestly, though I was hoping he wouldn’t have one,” Dean said. His brow was knitted in concern for his little brother, who was currently fighting a monster Dean couldn’t save him from.

Cas took a few quiet steps toward the bed.

“Cas, what are you-“

“Shhh, Dean,” Cas shushed him as he rested his hand on Sam’s head. Cas closed his eyes and Sam’s body slowly relaxed and his whimpering stopped.

A thought hit Dean so suddenly he felt like he had been struck over the head: he cared about Cas. Yeah, he knew that already, but in the quiet moment where Cas was taking care of Sam because he knew how much Dean wanted to do the same only cemented the fact that he cared about Sam and Cas in an entirely different way, even though he called them both family.

Cas opened his eyes and offered Dean a small smile. “He’ll have pleasant dreams now,” he said quietly. They both glanced down at the sleeping kid.

Dean’s eyes were soon back on Cas’, however. He took a step forward with the intention of saying something, but he lost bravery to say the words he wanted to say, so instead he said, “Thank you.”

 

The witch lived in an expensive apartment in the middle of the city. Which made her relatively easy to find, but also made her that much harder to kill. Breaking into an apartment was a bit different from breaking into a house.

It was evening the next day when the Impala rolled up to park across the street from the apartment. The hunter and the angel sat in the front while the six year old in the back squirmed. He didn’t quite understand the point of a stake out and didn’t like sitting still in a car for so long.

An hour passed and the witch- they discovered her name was Alexandra Grant- didn’t come out of the building.

“We’re going to have to go in there,” Dean said.

“How?” Castiel asked. “She’s not going to admit us; she’ll undoubtedly know who we are.”

“Don’t worry,” Dean said with a smirk. “I have a pretty good idea. You’d say that you look a bit like the witch, right? With your dark hair and all?”

Cas was hesitant as he agreed.

“Then this should work.”

 

Dean instructed Sam not to talk and told Cas to just play along. They stayed near the door to the building and waited for someone to walk up to the doors. Their wait was over when an older woman walked up. She looked suspiciously at the three until Dean offered her a smile.

“Hey,” he greeted her. “Is there any way you could let us in? We’re here to visit Alexandra- do you know her?- She’s not buzzing us in for whatever reason. She’s his sister.” He elbowed Cas, who obediently nodded.

The woman looked skeptical. “Then who are you?”

“I’m his partner,” Dean answered. He put an arm around Castiel’s waist as if to prove it. To the angel’s credit, he didn’t even seem bothered by it. In fact, Dean was pretty sure Cas leaned into him, but he might have been deluding himself. “It’s Sammy here’s birthday,” he tousled Sam’s hair. The kid looked up at him with an annoyed expression. “And we’re here to visit his Aunt Alex.”

For a moment, they looked the picture of a happy family.

The woman shrugged. She opened the door up for them, and held it open briefly enough for them to enter.

 

The witch lived on the top floor. The ride up the elevator was tensely quiet, and Dean took the time to crouch in front of Sam.

“Okay, Sammy. I want you to stay right next to Cas. Can you do that?”

“Are we going to see the witch?” the boy asked.

Dean paused, but nodded. “Yeah, I am. I’m going to go make sure she doesn’t hurt you, alright? But for me to do that you got to stay right by Cas outside.”

Cas made a noise of protest but with a look Dean silenced him. Sam nodded. Dean stood again and watched the number on the top of the elevator rise.

“Do you want to keep Cas safe too?” Sam asked. It seemed like he had been carefully contemplating the question.

The elevator dinged and the door opened.

“Yeah, I do,” Dean answered simply. He didn’t look back at Cas as he walked down the hallway.

 

With a touch of angelic grace, they didn’t need to knock on the witch’s door (what would they have said? Candy gram?) and they could avoid the noise the kicking it down would’ve caused. The locked clicked open and Dean entered the apartment with his gun out.

He gave a final look to Sam, who stood velcroed to Castiel’s side. The angel looked less than happy to be babysitting, but he knew it wasn’t an argument worth having.

The living room was empty. As was the kitchen. Dean was becoming concerned that the apartment was empty when he sound come from what he assumed was the bedroom.

It was a stifled shout and then the sound of someone being slapped. Dean didn’t hesitate to kick down the door this time.

Inside the room, a woman was bound and gagged. She was struggling against the ropes, and her panicked eyes were focused on the knife-wielding woman above her. The witch.

“Hey!” Dean shouted. “Why don’t you put the knife down? I’m sick of you freaking witches and your blood sacrifices.”

She wheeled around, the knife now pointed at Dean. “Look, I wouldn’t have to kill anyone else if you would just let me have the kid!”

“No freaking way, lady,” Dean scoffed.

“Then allow me to give you your heart’s desire,” she said. She approached him slowly, leaving her potential victim behind to try to bargain with Dean. “The spell will do anything. Fame, fortune, love… Anything you desire. Just give me the child and I will give it all to you.”

Dean didn’t bother to consider it. “No,” he said with a resolute shake of his head.

“Not even for your heart’s desire?”

Dean’s thoughts suddenly leapt to the hallway outside the apartment where Cas understood that Dean valued Sam’s safety over his own.

“I’m good,” Dean answered and pulled the trigger.

 

Outside the witch’s apartment, Cas stood at attention beside a fidgeting Sam.

“Is Dean okay?” the six year old asked quietly.

“Of course,” Cas answered, but he glanced over his shoulder into the apartment. He couldn’t see Dean.

It was then that they heard a muffled gunshot.

Sam’s eyes widened in horror, and Cas looked at the boy expectantly. It took a moment, but all at once a bright light flashed and a bit of smoke puffed into existence surrounding Sam. The smoke cleared, the light faded, and there stood a full grown Sam.

“Cas! What the hell?!” Sam looked around. “Where the hell am I?”

“The witch transformed you into a child,” Cas explained. “Dean just broke the spell.”

As if on cue, Dean walked out of the door with a woman following slowly behind him. She was rubbing at her wrists, where there were rope burns, and she had a few drops of blood across her cheek.

“Sammy!” Dean exclaimed when he saw him. “You’re back to being a moose.”

“Yeah, apparently,” Sam chuckled. “So what did I miss?”

“Just a dead witch and a hostage,” Dean answered, motioning toward the woman behind him.

“And ice cream,” Cas supplied. But Sam didn’t remember anything.

 

It was two days later. The mess surrounding the witch had been properly cleaned up so the brothers and the angel were ready to leave.

There was only one thing left to attend to.

“Dean, something’s troubling you.”

Sam was out getting dinner, so Dean and Cas were left in the motel. Dean had occupied himself with cleaning his gun. He had just fallen into the comfortable familiarity of the ritual and was left to his thoughts when Cas interrupted the silence of the room. Dean’s expression must have betrayed his slowly darkening train of thought.

“What do you mean?” Dean put on a smile. “I’m good. Witch is dead, we’re getting out of town soon, and there’s a haunting in Idaho to go to next. I’m good.”

Castiel frowned. “You’re not worried about Sam, are you? The spell won’t come back. He’s returned to his current age for good.”

Dean shook his head. “I know that, Cas.”

“Then what were you thinking about? You looked…” Cas searched for the right word. Despondent, melancholy, pained… “Sad.”

“Why does it matter?” Dean asked brusquely. He looked back down at the gun part and oiled rag in his hand. His thoughts must have been obvious; he had been thinking about how the way he felt toward Cas would ultimately be unreturned. So yeah, maybe Dean was a little bummed, but that didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it.

The angel gave a slight frown and stood from his seat at the table. He walked to the edge of the bed Dean was sitting on. “I dislike it when you look so sad.”

Cas shifted on his feet, suddenly aware of the weight of what he just confessed. Dean was aware of the weight too; he felt the words press heavily into his chest, momentarily threaten to crush him. Cas was staring down at him with sorrowful blue eyes, and suddenly Dean just couldn’t have the angel look so sad because of him. He set down the cleaning ran and part of the gun to stand before Cas.

“I feel the same,” Dean said impulsively. This time, he had been the one to invade Castiel’s space, but neither seemed to mind. “I care about you the same way.”

Something bordering on humor passed over Castiel’s face, but it was dismissed with a deepening frown. “I highly doubt that,” he said slowly.

“Don’t,” Dean murmured. And with a prayer to a god he knew probably wasn’t listening, he closed the space between them and captured the angel’s lips with his.

  
Years later, Dean and Cas always get ice cream on their anniversary. Dean always gets Superman ice cream, and Cas chocolate. Sam doesn’t understand the tradition, but he eats the strawberry ice cream they get him anyway. It always was his favorite.


End file.
